Is there any chance this could be released as-is and then updated once the set is complete? I'd be happy to pay full price now and then download another version of the PDF in a few months.

My group is a few months from starting book 3 and they've really come to appreciate the artwork that they know has specifically been done for the Kingmaker AP. At this point I've already given up hope we'll ever see books 4 through 6.

My group officially went to 6 players last night (without any animal companions thankfully) so I'm really looking forward to using this. When we ran book one I used the 6 player conversion but we only had 5 players plus two wolves and an intelligent giant centipede.

"With the heart of the Stolen Lands explored and the bandits who ruled there scattered, the long-contested realm finally lies open for pioneers and settlers to stake their claims. Amid the rush of opportunistic travelers, the PCs find themselves stewards over a new domain, tasked with the responsibility of guiding and guarding a fledgling nation struggling to grow upon a treacherous borderland. Yet the threats to this new nation quickly prove themselves greater than mere bandits and wild beasts, as the monstrous natives of the hills and forests rampage forth to slaughter all who have trespassed upon their territory. Can the PCs hold the land they've fought so hard to explore and tame? Or will their legend be just one more lost to the fangs of the Stolen Lands?

[ooc]This occurs at some point during the week Zavier is building his shack and Leroy is beginning design and construction of the boxing ring.[/occ]

While construction is ongoing outside of the trading post two riders approach from the north, one carrying a flag of Restov. Kesten's men do not raise an alarm and a simple double-strike of a watch bell alerts the leader of the guards as the riders are a short distance from the former fort.

Kesten meets the riders outside of the gates and after a few short words one of the riders dismounts and the two men step into the fort. The banner holder dismounts and makes himself at home in Kesten's small encampment.

A short time later the two men return, Oleg is trailing them with a look of concern on his face. The bannerman climbs back onto his horse and the two immediately head for the road.

===

Later in the day when hammering and curses of frustration have ceased coming from Zavier's construction site Kesten calls the party together. Oleg hovers on the periphery, his brow still bunched in a look of concern. Diego stands next a few steps back from Kesten, he looks significantly more confident with his presence at this gathering than Oleg.

"So," he begins slowly and glances around at each member of the party, "word of your actions has gotten back to the Dragonscale throne. Most of the Swordlords are very pleased with the deeds you've been accomplishing here in the Greenbelt." Kesten pauses and for a moment Diego has a look of satisfaction on his face.

Timeline spreadsheet has been updated. I also tallied up the coins the party has accumulated so far and added Kesten's quest.

Boar Spear: This spear with a spiraling blade has a metal crossbar approximately halfway down its length. If you ready a boar spear against a charge and your attack hits, you get a +2 shield bonus to your AC against that creature until your next turn.

Forgot to mention, in the area where you found the dead trapper the party also finds what you realize is the gushing source of the Thorn River. From amongst a rockfall on a hillside is a fast gurgling spring. This spring somehow produces enough water to turn into a raging river dozens of miles downstream. Yeah.

In the time the party has been back at the trading post some of you may have noticed that Kesten and Tathar have been spending a lot of time in quiet conversation over pints at Tathar's brew. When a member of the party passes by Kesten will glance in their direction quickly and then continue in hushed discussion with the druid.

Aside from making a mess and ending up with a dead centipede, you're able to extract two doses of giant centipede poison.

Save, FORT DC 13; 1/round for 6 rounds; 1d3 Dex damage; Cure 1 save

Leroy:

As you complete your prayer in from of the centipede egg, the creature inside of the egg begins to thrash around and the egg rocks from side to side for a few moments. From inside of the egg you hear a long hiss.

Through SCIENCE you're able to locate some leafed plants you think will assist you in brewing Alchemist's Kindness. Typically the ingredients of the alchemist's remedy are salt-like but you succeed in creating something that is helpful in alleviating hangovers.

It also however randomly reduces either Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution by 1d2 points for 6 hours and puts the drinker into a euphoric state.

Leroy:

Go ahead and give me a DC roll with the following bonuses - Wisdom, Divine Favor (if you kept it), and Knowledge Religion if you happen to have it. This is your prayer.

Zavier spends the night at the outpost studying the journal and the spellbook.. for science of course...

Zavier is able to decipher the following spells from the partially destroyed spellbook: identify, mage armor, reduce person, silent image, and unseen servant.

Tartuk's journal:

The following is a copy/paste of information about Tartuk's past.

Tartuk is a destructive
force—a murderer and a maniac who finds a perverse glee
in manipulating his kin into self-destructive spirals of
fear and madness. He’s ruined two kobold tribes already,
and hopes to add the Sootscales to his list soon. Tartuk’s
appearance is as unusual as his loathing of kobold
kind—his scales are a deep purple, unlike any other
kobold. In fact, Tartuk was not born a kobold—he was
born a gnome. He was killed in a fight against a group
of ogres who were tormenting his village, but his
accidentally heroic sacrifice was enough to give his village
a chance to defeat the ogres. The village, sorrowed by
Tartuk’s death, unanimously voted to restore him to
life—so they decided to use a scroll of reincarnate that had
sat in the village treasury for years. In an ironic twist of
fate, poor Tartuk came back as a kobold.

Scandalized, the village didn’t know how to react.
Tartuk did—he hadn’t meant to give his life to save
the village (he’d actually been trying to surrender to
the ogres and offer to help them destroy the village in
return for sparing his life, but the ogres crushed him
before he got his offer out), and now they’d turned him
into one of the most hated of monsters—a kobold! The
fact that his new scales were the same deep purple as his
hair in his previous life served only to ensure Tartuk’s
shame. Enraged, he fled into the woods, only to nurse a
deep grudge. He found a tribe of kobolds, joined them,
used his magic and manipulative lies to rally them, and
led his new army in an attack against his old village. The
resulting battle was furious, and only Tartuk survived.
That was fine with him.

Since then, the mad kobold has drifted through several
River Kingdoms, periodically haunting towns and
murdering gnomes he finds and at others insinuating
himself into kobold tribes, taking them over from within,
and then driving them to extinction by forcing them into
wars they can’t possibly win. The Sootscales are but Tartuk’s
latest project. He uses a combination of lies, magic, and his
favorite tool—a non-magical statue of a devil—to seize
control of a tribe. He’s become quite skilled at convincing
tribes that the statue is magic and that it will curse the
entire tribe if the chieftain doesn’t follow its commands—
commands, of course, that only Tartuk can hear.

Zavier spends the night at the outpost studying the journal and the spellbook.. for science of course...

Thank you sir. Let's assume that you do this on the evening the party arrives back at the trading post. The next morning is when you give Oleg the list of items you're trying to procure. I'm off to play HeroQuest after work tonight so later on I'll provide you with a list of the spells in the spell book and a copy of what is in Tartuck's journal.

If anyone else has anything else they'd like for Oleg to order, please enter it into the Gameplay thread. So far the items Zavier has requested should be available within a week.

EDIT: For Gameplay, assume the party arrives back at the trading post at 9 in the morning. On Thursday, we'll pick up the action at noon the next day. Anything in between those times is fair game for board actions.

You continue to have the same dream each night. When you settle in for a night of rest at the trading post without having to worry about setting up a watch, you're awoken three times by the dream. Each time it becomes more intense.

After finding the hidden cache from the treasure map the party returns to Oleg's trading post. Stopping a few hours short of the trading post to rest for the night, the party arrives mid-morning at the trading post.

It has been 13 days since the party departed the trading post. We will pick up the game on Thursday at noon "a day after the party arrives at the trading post" per Zavier's above post. Feel free to post any actions you'd like to make before that time.

As you and the mite ride north, away from the party, for several hours skirting the edge of the wooded area where you left the others. The sky grows darker as you're entering the plain where you encountered the trap door spiders. You notice a rise a short way to the east and a simple campfire burning next to a copse of trees.

After hearing about the Kobols Leroy looks at Orhan to see if he thinks that anything is fishy about his story (because Orhan has a better sense for this stuff then Leroy). However, Orhan just sits quietly listening to Oleg un-phased by anything that was said. Trusting his loyal companion Leroy thanks Oleg for his assistance and proceeds to inform his companions about the other jobs while Oleg speaks with Tathar.

Leroy:

Oleg strikes you as a guy who is pretty upfront and he didn't hesitate when describing the kobolds as not being troublesome.

If there's anything else anyone wants to take care of in the Game Play thread, go for it. Otherwise we'll start off tonight with Leroy's sense motive roll (conversation with Oleg) and the result of the knowledge nature checks for the tracks that were found (hexploration of A5).

"See" you all tonight. I'll be replacing the trading post map, I finally figured out how to get the map images from the AP and MapTool to match up. Which also means I'll be redoing a few maps at dinner tonight.

Name: Happs and Company
Race: Human
Class:... you all know who they are ...Adventure: The Stolen Lands
Location: entrance to Oleg's trading post
Catalyst: coming to pay Oleg a visit

Gory Details:

Spoiler:

The party set up a pretty good ambush for Happs and company. The campaign is running with 5 players and some animal companions so there were a total of 4 bandits along with him for their monthly visit to Oleg's trading post.

Step one of the party's ambush was setting up a line of bear traps near the wagon. A good Disguise Self roll by the party's alchemist and a poor perception roll by Happs led him right into the traps. Happs didn't stand a chance when the trap closed around his leg. For cinematic effect I took his leg off mid-calf as he went down to one hit point.

Two of the bandits went down in the surprise round - one to an arrow by the party rogue and another to the paladin and his animal companion bear.

Round one saw Happs finished off with a knife across the throat by the vivisectionist and bandit number three was knocked prone ... into one of the other bear traps. He didn't get back up. The rogue put an arrow into bandit number four and almost finished him off. The bandit (who was still on horseback) turned made a dash for it. He was finished off by the druid who rode out after him on a wolf!

The door to the trading post is definitely more reinforced when you're finished, also a bit stinkier with the onion smashed against it.

===============

Exploration of the area (Hex A5)

The party rides peacefully through wide grasslands for most of the day. Heading east from Oleg's there is a faint foot trail off into the distance. The bandits meandering trail of seven horses heads towards the south. It appears that until they'd gotten to within a few miles of the trading post they had been riding fairly hard.

Towards the end of the day a few members of the party pull their horses to a stop as a trail of huge clawed tracks are found gouged into the dirt.

I'm going to type up some Gameplay responses to the rolls and whatnot this evening after work. If anyone else has anything going on, just let me know.

Also, I'm going to set up a Google Documents spreadsheet where I'm going to write an in-character GM recap from the perspective of various characters. Anyone else can use it for note-taking or whatnot. Ultimately we can use the spreadsheet to keep track of kingdom resources. But really though ... that's probably going to be for other characters to deal with. :)

PS - Each member of the party gets 100 XP for every hex fully explored. I'll calculate the XP for exploring Oleg's hex (A5) into next week's total.

By the way, COMMON mistake there ... each member of the party gets 25 XP for each hex fully explored. Sorry, my bad!

AND one last thing before I go drinking for the evening ...

If anyone has any questions for Oleg or Svetlana they'd like to RP in the gameplay thread, go for it. They're very grateful for the assistance with the bandits and are willing to share as much information as they have regarding the area. (Which isn't much.)

Excellent question! In order to start exploring a hex the party just needs to indicate that your intent is to fully explore it. That will slow movement down. Oleg's hex will take just under a day because part of the area has already been cleared, but typically a plains hex will take one full day to explore completely.

While exploring a hex you can make a Survival or Perception check and let me know the results. If the party is just traveling through a hex I might ask for a general route through the hex and specifically ask for a check.

If anyone is interested in roleplaying the exploration of the hex Oleg's trading post is in via the Gameplay thread, go for it. I rolled for it and you're free to wander within that hex.

PS - Each member of the party gets 100 XP for every hex fully explored. I'll calculate the XP for exploring Oleg's hex (A5) into next week's total.

PSS - Based on the charter indicating 60 miles south of Oleg's trading post, this means that in order to complete the charter you'll need to fully explore down to (and including) row F on the hex map. Ultimately if an area is to be settled the hex will need to be fully explored and cleared, so you're free to explore as far south as the party wishes to go.

Here is the starting map. As I mentioned, the party will still need to explore the hex where Oleg's trading post is located. For the purposes of discussing where the party will be heading, consider Oleg's to be hex A5.

A few hours after the slaughter of the bandits Svetlana has managed to sweep away most of the blood stains. The area around where the bear traps were hidden looks as if the ground will be discolored for some time to come.

Oleg seeks out Leroy to further discuss the gear. "Best things to come out of this little," he pauses to glance at the dried black blood on the side of his wagon that sprayed from a severed leg and then starts again, "umm, this little situation was the horses and that bow Happs was carrying. I think I'm just going to hold onto that myself but ain't no one around here calling me a crook, I worked it into dis number. But anyways, best I can do on the equipment is about 500 in credit. That leather those boys were wearing didn't make it through your alls way of fighting. Deal?"